An Unorthodox Way to Solder a wire to an MCPCB ~ ~ Low Profile Attachment (HD2010)

Nice effort OF. I love your thinking. I should write all these ideas down as I forget them.

8)

That's one of those "why didn't I think of that?" ideas. Nice!

Nice idea, that will come in handy sometime!

When you do that, isn’t there s chance that both the negative and positive pads get shorted together?

The main thing to watch out for is shorting the pad to ground. That’s why I made the holes tight to the wire. You don’t want any solder to flow down the hole past the dielectric layer and shorting the pad to ground.
I tested the system on old aluminum MCPCBs first, and only had that problem once. Mostly the solder doesn’t gravitate onto nonconductive surfaces. At each step I touch the probes of my DMM onto the pad and the edge of the MCPCB to make sure that hasn’t occurred.
Yes, things could go south on you if you’re not careful and drill large sloppy holes, but so far it’s worked out for me.

I've been wondering recently why there aren't any mcpcb's with solder pads on the bottom, similar to what OL did in one of his videos... It'd be cleaner and easier use big reflectors.

Dang - I find this should be easier for me than O-L's method. Risk is the grounding, but easily can be buzzed out if it happened. The Y3 has the same issue with a flat bottom reflector, but the MaxToch 26mm copper DTP star should take care of that by extending the connections outside the flat section.

I think to have solder pads on the bottom would be more difficult to produce. Solder pads on the top only require a surface dielectric layer. To move them to the bottom, there would have to be an insulated core going from top to bottom. Then how are you going to keep them from coming into contact with the bottom of the pill?

I think this method is even lower profile than a piece of copper braid saturated in solder. I’m pretty sure I could have gotten it even flatter, but I’ve been using my side cutters for things they shouldn’t be used for. Rather than giving the wire nice clean flush snip, I had to kind of gnaw at it.

Test it out with old aluminum stars you’ll never use and a DMM. Teflon wires and tight holes.

Great idea! Thanks for sharing. Looks like a good option for some lights...especially the HD2010.

This is brilliant! Thank you Ouchyfoot. :beer:

I had this light out last night, and I’m loving it. The beam is perfect and throws true, a tube of light.

I bought three of these a while ago and played around at modding one of them. I was never really that impressed with any of the beam profiles it produced. They’ve been sitting in a box …ignored. I even had copper pills for all of them, but
never really got into the HD2010. Something just bugged me about it.

If you don’t get the reflector perfectly focused, it’s a so-so light. But now that I’ve got it right, I can’t believe I’ve been ignoring them for so long. There’s only one way…that reflector needs to sit as low as possible. It needs to do the reflector limbo.

Maybe on my next one, I’ll open up the reflector so the MCPCB is entirely inside the reflector. I’m sure it’s been done already…anyone got a link?

I think your missing out on something. White wall beam pattern has never been all that good, but in practical use, the HD2010 is a great light. I've gifted and modded a few, and everyone seems to love the things. I prefer the Y3 now for the $$$, but still...

I like it now! It’s great. I only worked on one other and it never attained a beam pattern that was truly focused. Now I know what it needs. I’ll rebuild my first one and work on the third.


wow, just wow

holy moly that is a great idea. How to you make sure the LED is centered? With my luck, I’d drill the holes barely in the wrong spot and the LED would be off center.

I used a small file to flatten out the solder and wire… Was thinking the same thing grant :slight_smile:

In this case, there was no centering to be done. The pill was exactly the size of a 20mm MCPCB. If this isn’t the case, you just put themal adhesive on the star, screw down the reflector until it’s centered and wait for it to dry. Then remove the reflector, and drill your holes.

brilliant idea. Now if I can just remember it next time I need it.